Page:Electoral purity and economy.djvu/9

 every penny spent beyond what is absolutely necessary—and a very small percentage of the present expenditure is really "necessary"—must be corrupt expenditure, though by no means always wilfully corrupt.

The cost of elections is enormous. Adding 25 per cent, to the "returned expenses" of the last three elections—in order to bring them more in accord with the actual expenditure—we find the totals to be as follows; and these figures are certainly under the mark:—1868, £1,800,000; 1874, £1,400,000; 1880, £2,200,000.

If we analyse these totals, taking 1880 as an instance, we find that the expenditure of that year was made up as follows: —

Hire of Conveyances, 16¼ per cent, of the total.

Agents, Clerks, Canvassers, Messengers, etc., 39¼ per cent.

Printing and Advertising, Committee-Rooms, and miscellaneous, 37 per cent.

Returning Officers' charges, 7½ percent.

In order to discover where legitimate reductions of expenditure can be obtained, we will take each of these items separately.

1. .—It is now generally admitted that payment for the conveyance of voters, in boroughs at all events, shall be no longer allowed; and that provision being made for an increased number of polling places in counties, conveying should be prohibited there also. But, in addition, it is necessary that an owner should be debarred from having a tacit understanding whereby he places his vehicles and horses at the disposal of a candidate, with the hope or certainty of future advantage to himself. The simple and the only way of preventing such infractions of the law would be to supply an ample number of polling places, and to forbid any volunteer conveying at all; the onus of proof—in case of petition or inquiry—lying on the voter conveying himself, or being conveyed, to show that the conveyance belonged to him, or was bonâ fide hired by himself for his own use alone. In order that physical infirmity should not incapacitate a voter from recording his vote, it should be the duty of the Returning Officer, on receipt of a doctor's certificate, to provide a conveyance for the afflicted voter, charging the cost to the "official expenses." Thus no one could be corruptly